


When the Waves Were High

by dracovian



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Self-Insert, more tags when they apply i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2018-07-23 23:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7483329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracovian/pseuds/dracovian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's a girl to do when she wakes up and suddenly finds herself on a deserted island stuck in a (not-so) fictional (anymore) manga series running longer than she's been alive? Scream. Mikaela screams a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She wakes to the sound of the ocean in her ears, sand beneath her fingertips, a clear bright blue sky high above her, the warmth of the sun on her skin, and the startling realization that she explicitly doesn't remember being anywhere close to the coast.

Scrambling to push herself up off the ground, she curses quietly when she starts to stumbles after she manages to stand and take a few steps, fighting against a sudden wave of nausea from getting up too quickly. She trips on her bag, a tan leather satchel bag, and almost falls flat on her face before she barely catches herself.

Her eyesight is blurry, spots of black dancing in her vision, but she can see a stretch of beach in front of her, taking in the clean white sand and gentle waves of beautiful cerulean crashing on the shore, and a dense forest and a few palm trees behind her.

On her left is the remains of a beached capsized shipwreck with a few missing boards of wood in its hull, dilapidated and falling from age and the constant ebbing of the waves. There's a few knocked over barrels lying on the sand next to it, just as old and worn as the rest of the sailboat. 

She doesn't recognize this place in the slightest and she's starting to feel tears brim up at the corners of her eyes because she doesn't understand what the _fuck_ is going on.

The last place she knows that she was at was smack in the middle of the city, and she can feel the claws of slowly-building hysteria and anxiety settling in besides the overwhelming confusion and fear she's had since waking because she has absolutely no clue where she is or what happened or who, or _what_ , brought her here and _why_ and she really wants to scream.

Suspicions about being abducted makes her feel sick with paranoia, heart beginning to race as she struggles to breathe from panic, and she places her hand above her chest and lets her fingers dig in to her skin while trying to calm herself down. Panicking won't help her figure out whatever the fuck is going on, so she can't panic. 

Repeating those words to herself over and over until she feels her breathing start to ease, she slowly lets her hand drop after she dabs at her eyes to wipe away the moisture in them. She still feels sick and her heart is still hammering, but it's bearable. She can deal with it until she can either figure out what's going on or find a safe enough place to hide and let herself break down.

The first thing she does is do a quick check of her person, trying to figure out if anything's been done to her and what supplies she has on her that her assumed kidnapper hasn't taken from her. Her apparel is still the same as she last remembered, thankfully. She still has her plain open front long-sleeved navy knit cardigan on, heather gray v-neck, black jeans, and black lace-up combat boots. 

There's the familiar weight of her phone in the pockets of her jeans too, and she quickly fumbles to pull it out. She feels like crying or screaming— and maybe she even does start shrieking, just a little, judging by how she notices some seagulls burst out of the forest and fly away— when she taps the power button only to see that she doesn't any have service, killing her hopes of being able to call for help. 

Then she notices the fact that she has internet connection somehow, and all the frustration and returning hysteria in her immediately changes into bafflement. How the fuck could she have fucking Wi-Fi if she doesn't have any signal? 

She's starting to feel a headache come on because nothing is making any sense, but ultimately she decides that trying to figure out this latest mystery isn't worth pondering over right now when she can use this unexpected boon.

Unlocking her phone and tapping in her pass-code, she quickly tries to open up her navigation app to at least find out where she currently is. She frowns in confusion when her phone asks for a password to load the app, and then cancels it out to try her Twitter app to ask for help. That doesn't work either. What the fuck.

After more fiddling and attempts she realizes that the only thing she has access to are a few of her mobile games and the Safari app, with access limited to only a few sites including: Wikipedia, wikiHow, and confusingly enough, just the One Piece category on a manga site. This time, she doesn't even bother to restrain herself, and just plops down on her back and starts screeching.

When all the seagulls within a half-mile radius have flown away in fright and she's managed to calm down a full ten minutes later, she sits up and starts to reach for her bag to see what other bullshit could possibly happen to her this time. She quickly mutters a prayer before unbuckling the latches keeping it closed to fold the top over so she can take a quick inventory at her things, hoping that nothing important has been taken or sabotaged.

She sees her change of clothes, a plain blue three-quarter sleeve baseball raglan tee and a pair of navy high-waisted balloon shorts, still neatly folded in the corner. When she pops open her glasses case, her reading glasses are in perfect condition. Her brown bombay leather journal seems just fine too when she pulls it out to flip through it, and her nice fountain pen is still working beautifully. 

Her bag of disposable ball-point pens and the three cheap notebooks she has for jotting down notes aren't missing either. Her earphones and phone charger are still in the inside pocket on her bag. The strange-looking, murky gray apple in her bag with the weird swirls on it doesn't look bruised as well, so she supposes that at the very least her things haven't been touched.

Then she freezes, staring at the apple, and vehemently starts praying that this is a stress-induced hallucination or _something_ , because she _knows_ what that fruit is and what it's associated with, and this just _can't_ be happening.

Slowly, she close her bag and lies back down and pushes one of her sleeves up so she can pinch herself hard, hoping that she'll be woken up from this complete and utter nightmare. Unfortunately, it doesn't work and all she gets is pain and a small, nasty pinch bruise in her elbow.

“Fuck,” she says loudly, to herself and the clouds leisurely floating above her because there's a fucking Devil Fruit in her bag and the implications that its existence in her presence is giving her has turned her headache into a fully-blown migraine now. “ _Fuck_. How the fuck am I in _One Piece_ of all fucking things?”

* * *

 

 

An hour of blankly staring up at the sky while trying to come to terms with the newest situation in her life later, she finally gets up again. As comfortable as soaking in the sun while trying not to scream and sob her heart out was, it's not going to change her situation into anything better.

She can't get the answer to why she's in the fictional universe of a weekly Japanese manga that's older than she is if she just lies there and does nothing. 

Inactivity doesn't fix problems, so the only thing she can do is take action even if her legs feel like lead and she feels like she barely has the energy to move. She tugs her cardigan off to tie it around her waist before she decides to head into the forest to take a look around while it's still early.

If she's lucky, maybe she can find some food and shelter for the night or even a way off the island. If she's unlucky, maybe she'll get mauled by a wild animal or something. She'll take the gamble. She doesn't have anything left.

So she pushes past a bush as she takes her first step into the forest, sliding her bag onto her shoulder. It's an easy walk thankfully, where all she has to mind are a couple of stray tree branches and a few large roots in the dirt, and she doesn't hear any other noise besides the sounds of her own footsteps.

Which pretty much means that there's no other form of life on this island but her, and that it's completely deserted. Getting off this island is going to be more complicated than she first expected. She still has to figure out where she is. If she's in one of the Blues, then it'll be good. The Blues are safe enough.

Sure, there'll still be pirates and corrupt Marines with the potential to be worse than pirates, but those unfortunately exist everywhere and it's much better then being dropped somewhere in the Grand Line with no way to defend herself.

Paradise might be iffy though, depending on how close to the Red Line she is, but she might be able to survive. God forbid her being alone in the New World though. She might as well go ahead and off herself early before something comes and gives her a cruel and excruciatingly painful death. 

Another thing she has to do is find where the Strawhats are so she can figure out in the timeline she is. In any luck, she's still pre-time skip, because she's not that keen on suddenly being thrown to a period with a giant powder keg in the middle of the Grand Line, where every single faction with power is getting ready for another war. She's not ready for _Marineford 2: Marineford Harder_.

She pauses walking for a moment at the thought of Marineford with a grimace, remembering all the chaos and the deaths of Whitebeard and Ace before speeding up her pace to get rid of the sudden uncomfortable feeling she gets. 

She can't help but remembers the look of absolute _anguish_ on Luffy's face as he held his dying brother in his arms, remembers the broken _howl_ he left out. Yeah, she's definitely not ready for that to happen. It's doubtful she'd actually be anywhere near Marineford if it happens, but the fact that she's seen what happens there doesn't make her feel any better about it.

Although, speaking of Luffy... She wonders if she should try and join the Strawhats. Sure, life as a Strawhat is dangerous judging by the type of shit they get into on a regular basis, but they're strong and take care of their own. Plus, she's already got knowledge about their futures so she'll at least be aware of any threats they'll be facing. Her chances of finding the answers she's looking for about how she's here would be better traveling around with them than it would be if she stayed on some island anyway.

They're good pirates and good people too, which is a plus, and as long as she can get Luffy's interest it's a guaranteed that he'd let her on. If the Devil Fruit she has in her bag doesn't give her powers that attract his attention, then she's got eight years of piano lessons and five of choir to get his attention as the temporary holder of the musician role for his crew until Brook joins. 

It'll work. She'll make it work.

By the time she's finalized her decision to join the Strawhats, she's managed to find her way to the other side of the island, and she stares at what's on this beach.

A sailboat, a small sloop like the one her uncle owned that she used to sail with, sits on the sand in perfect shape and condition, and she almost falls on her face as she runs over towards it, thanking every deity she can think of for this stroke of good luck. She almost cries when she notices the bag of supplies sitting inside it, giving her water and dried meat with a few cans of foods and a map and a compass. 

There's a little note on the side of the map too pointing to an island reading, ' _you are here_ ,' so she can find her way to actual civilization. She's not sure who left this here, but she wants to give them a kiss because they deserve it.

Then she notices a letter at the bottom of the bag, and the desire to cry of happiness is immediately replaced with righteous fury after she reads it.

' _Good luck, Mikaela_ ,' it reads, with a small encouraging smiley face drawn next to the words. ' _You'll need it_.'

She screams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a thousand years, sorry. My laptop broke down for a while, then I got a job and was busy and ended up completely forgetting about this story. I finally found the document for this chapter so? Thought I might as well upload it and finish it.

A trend that Mikaela's noticed as she's gotten older is that you never truly appreciate things right until you really need them. For example, the conveniences that modern civilization and urban life provides or maybe the amazing versatility that electricity has to make the quality of life so much better. You know, all the stuff that you use on a daily basis and kind of forget about.

Right now though, the thing that's at the top of that list is her good old Uncle Daniel who she hasn't seen since the divorce. When she was a young brat, he used to have to drag her kicking and screaming out of the house and away from her books for his bimonthly _bonding_ weekends.

He'd take her out sailing every summer, made her watch him run the boat on his own for years until he thought that she was old enough and then would make _her_ do it while he would supervise. He'd laugh while she struggled to keep the boat from capsizing and then would only help when the boat really _would_ capsize and she had already been halfway off the boat.

When they'd go camping and hiking with just the two of them, he'd make her carry the map and compass and make her responsible for ensuring that they don't get lost, still laughing as she would sweat and worry about actually getting them lost.

As an eleven year old, it wasn't fun. She had made so many elaborate plans and excuses to get out of going with him, and every single time he would make her go anyway. If one looked for the definition of jackass in a dictionary, good old Uncle Daniel's picture would definitely be there.

Still, even though Mikaela used to think of those trips as useless, unnecessarily stressful and incredibly upsetting, and a waste of her time, as she's adjusting the heading of the sloop, she's ready to accept that maybe he _was_ a little right about their weekends together having a purpose. Even if this whole bullshit with being thrown into a different world is definitely not what he meant.

God knows that the English major she's working on isn't exactly doing anything for her. Her ability to write a six-page research paper within four hours and the number of articles she's written for the school's newspaper isn't helping her steer this boat right now.

Uncle Daniel might have put her through a bunch of shit when she was young, but the experience said shit is giving her is currently helping her survive through this nightmare so she thinks that she's going to forgive him a little.

Not completely, because those trips was the bane of her existence when she still had to go on them, but just enough that if she managed to get back, she'd give him a call and thank him for being enough of an ass to make a crying ten year old go out for weekend trips she obviously did _not_ want to be going on.

Without the survival skills that he pushed onto her, she would have been stuck on that island until someone came by. _If_ someone would have come by, honestly, because an empty island like that isn't much of a tourist attraction.

She's not _naïve_ enough to believe that just having a couple of wikiHow articles on how to sail a boat could save her inexperienced self from capsizing and drowning before she managed to get any further than twenty feet away.

Beginner's luck could only take her so far, and unlike Luffy, she doesn't have the status of main protagonist to protect her from dying before the plot is over. Nor does she have the same stubborn tenacity and sheer willpower he has to survive.

Death is a real threat for her. Pinching herself earlier proved that she could still feel pain and that she could still get injured, and her arms are still stinging from the physical exertion of having to push the boat into the water.

With the type of strength that people have in this world, she's going to get injured a _lot_ and she can only hope that just being in the _One Piece_ universe gives her body some of the physical resistance that she needs to survive here. She's not made of rubber like Luffy, nor does she have as much blood in her body as Zoro apparently does.

If her body is still the same as it was, then she'll need to figure something out quick or she'll basically be just be a walking piece of wet tissue paper to the type of enemies they're going to face. The foes they face just keep on progressively getting stronger and stronger, and she'll be fucked if she's late enough to not have a chance to even try to catch up.

Hell, she actually probably wouldn't even have to worry about the fights. Chances are, the Strawhats themselves might take her out by complete accident with the type of strength they have before an enemy can.

The thought of eating the Devil Fruit she still has in her bag makes her grimace, already feeling dread at the thought of the taste and knowing that she'll be giving up her ability to swim, but it's the only option she has right now.

She doesn't have much in the way of defending herself right now besides a few martial arts classes she took when she was fifteen and a willingness to fight as dirty as needed, and it's doubtful that it'd be enough.

Hopefully it'll give her a useful ability. It'd be pretty great if it was a Logia-type, but she's not exactly counting on that. As long as she doesn't get something ridiculously niche like coral generation, she'll be a happy camper.

Although whatever she gets, she'll have to deal with it. If she really does get the ability to make coral, then she needs to find a way to properly utilize it. If Mr. 3 can fight with wax, then she could most definitely fight with coral.

As useless as that ability sounds on paper, she knows that if she's clever with it then she can make it work. Devil Fruits are unpredictable things and the strength of one depends on the user. You just have to get creative.

She'll figure it out. She has to.

Mikaela doesn't know if dying here would send her back to the real world or if it would actually kill her for real, but she isn't quite keen on experimenting and finding out just yet.

Leaning back against the sloop's mast for some shade, she sighs loudly as she keeps an eye on her compass and map. She'll be damned if she gets herself hopelessly lost at sea. Dying from starvation and dehydration because she got careless isn't very appealing to her, not when she hasn't even met the Strawhats yet.

She might have some supplies, but they're only enough to last her a week— maybe a week and a half, depending on how she controls her portions. She doesn't even have a can opener for the cans she has either, so they're useless to her at the moment.

Thankfully, the winds have been good and she's heading for the next island without any complications. She's not sure if it's a stroke of good fortune or the intervention of whatever higher being dropped her in this world.

Mikaela swears that she sees a smiley face in the clouds. She's tempted to curse it out, but manages to restrain herself. There's no point in yelling at clouds and wearing out her throat. Even if it would make her feel a little better.

She's _sure_ this all is the work of a higher being though, because there's absolutely no way a normal human being could put her into a fictional world. Honestly, she's not sure if she should be glad that this being took her here or if she would have preferred being taken by some kidnapper instead.

She's lucky that whoever, _whatever_ this being is seems reasonably benign. It— they? Mikaela isn't sure what kind of pronouns to use for something that could possibly be a deity or something— might have dropped her in this world, but it didn't just kick her in and told her to swim.

It left her supplies and a boat to get off the island, and it also gave her a way to defend herself too, so she's unsure if it's something she could possibly consider a tentative ally. She supposes that only time will tell.

She feels uneasy thinking about how little she actually knows about anything right now and how she doesn't have any assurances at all, throat tightening from the anxiety creeping up in her before she pushes it away and shuts it down like she's been doing since she woke up.

There's no point in thinking about it. Getting upset over this situation won't help her figure out anything. She needs to spend her energy thinking about something productive instead of wasting it on anxiety attacks or emotional breakdowns.

God, Mikaela thinks as she slowly slides down against the mast until her back hits the deck, she really hopes she finds land soon. She's feeling too restless, stuck alone on this tiny boat with nothing she can do.

Shaking her head, she decides to do something to occupy herself. Opening her satchel, she reaches in to take out one of her notebooks, a pocket-sized one with a hard cover and an elastic closure, and one of her cheap pens.

With one hand, she pulls the band keeping the book closed off and flips it open to an empty page as she raises the pen to her mouth to bite the lid off. Keeping the lid between her teeth, she puts the pen to paper before she starts to write a list of what she needs to do when she arrives on an island.

The first thing she needs to do is find out just where she is and where the Strawhats are. She needs to know which seas she's in so she can start planning out her next plan of action. She'll try checking the news for them first, and then asking around to see if anyone's heard anything about them or not if she doesn't see anything. Figuring out where they are is vital to determining where the timeline is currently at.

Second thing she needs to do is to eat her Devil Fruit. The sooner the better, because she'll need the time to practice with it and figure out what she can do with it before she gets into a fight. She'd like to eat it already and get it over with but right now, while she's all alone on the open sea, is the most awful time to suddenly become a hammer.

Third thing to do is to acquire a way to generate funds. When she looked in her wallet, she had found about 45,000 beli in it replacing the cash she had in there originally. It's a good amount to start with, but it's still a limited source. She needs to find a way to get more.

Fourth thing would be to get would be supplies, and to get herself a can-opener. She'll need more food and water if she needs to chase after the Strawhats, and some other miscellaneous things. Rope and an extra sail or two, and then some personal hygiene products depending on if they exist in this time period.

Fifth would be to pick up more clothes. All she's got are the two outfits on her. She's not a person that needs many clothes but having to wear the same clothes for more than a couple of days isn't very hygienic. She understands why anime wardrobes are so limited, since it's a pain to keep designing more clothes, but she refuses to wear the exact same clothes for over a month.

She stops writing when she starts to see what looks like an island come onto the horizon, and she almost falls out of the boat when she clambers around the mast to the front of the sloop to get a better look.

"Land ho," she whispers to herself with a wide grin as she raises a hand to shield her eyes from the light of the sun. "Land fucking ho."

#  ⚓

It's a while before she gets close enough to the island to make out anything distinct. As nice as seeing dry land again looked, it told her absolutely nothing though about where she was though.

When she can make out more details of the island, she takes in the full sight of it. Greenery and high cliffs, and she can barely see the tops of a few high buildings peeking out too.

It takes her a few moments to recognize where she's found herself— Mikaela's not sure if it's impressive that she can tell where she is just from looking at the island, or a little off-putting that she can _tell_ just from looking at the island.

Loguetown stands in front of her in all its glory, which quickly simplifies what she has to do for the first step of her list. With it in her sights, it's obvious that she's in East Blue. Now all she has to do is find out where the Strawhats are.

Thankfully, all she has to do is check and see if Smoker's still in town. If he's there and still fighting off crooks, then she can just stay and wait for the Strawhats to arrive. If he's not there, then that means he's gone chasing after them and it'll be her turn.

With any luck, they won't be too far away. She's not sure what she should do if she really has been dropped off after the time skip because it's doubtful she'd be able to make it to the New World. She'll just have to hope that the higher being is still being nice.

By the time she docks her sloop at the harbor, the afternoon is starting to bleed into evening. She's made good time, she thinks. When she started sailing, it was still early morning. She's glad that she's just not spending the night out on the ocean without anything to keep warm.

Although, spending the night in a town that all the pirates in the East Blue pass through without a blanket or anything to defend herself isn't much better, she thinks with a grimace.

Mikaela might have beli on her, but she doesn't know if she has enough to spare for a hotel room. She'll check the prices, but if it's too much then she'll have to spend the night out on the streets. The thought makes her uneasy, but it's not the first time she's done something like this.

She takes a moment to transfer the supplies in the bag to her satchel before she enters the town, carefully arranging everything so it all fits. It's a bit of a struggle to fit all cans in, but she manages. She'd rather not leave her only supply of food all alone in the open like this and get them stolen.

Walking underneath the large arch at the entrance and making her way down the cobblestone street, she takes a look around and takes in the sight of the town. With the Loguetown arc only lasting about four chapters, she doesn't really have all that much information about this place.

There had been a couple of anime filler episodes here, from what she can remember, but she had never really watched any of them. Growing much, she hadn't ever really had the time to sit down to binge anime. It was easier to sneak manga volumes into the house to read after-school as she waited to be picked up.

With any luck, non-canon events wouldn't end up being relevant. She holds back a large sigh at the thought of having to deal with the possibility of having gaps in her knowledge, then shakes her head to focus on taking in the town instead.

The buildings in Loguetown are tall and surprisingly clean, with no graffiti or any weird suspicious stains on any of the white stone walls at all. It's a little weird, but she wonders if that's due to fear of Smoker kicking ass if he caught anyone vandalizing his town.

Loguetown was beautiful though, both large and impressive. The rows of buildings on both sides of her goes as far as she can see, splitting into multiple different streets and hidden alleyways to lead deeper into the heart of the town.

Like in any tourist town, the place is still bustling with people even with the sun slowly dipping below the horizon. There are crowds out and about minding their businesses that she sidesteps and walks around as she makes her way down the street.

Mikaela supposes the first matter of business is to check for Smoker. It'd probably be easiest and quickest to just ask one of the residents if he's still here or not, instead of spending time finding the Marine base or trying to caught sight of him while he's on a patrol around town.

Besides, she'd like to avoid as much contact with the Marines as possible. Smoker especially, if he really is still here. It'd make running into him in the future during his chase after the Strawhats a lot more awkward if he knew her in any capacity.

At the corner of the street, there's a small shop with a sign above it that reads, _Rhonda's General Goods._ She heads for it as soon as she spots it, deciding to take the chance to go ahead and buy the supplies she needs.

Unlike the other stores, it's surprisingly empty when she enters it. There's only an older, heavyset woman with her hair tied up in a bun inside, standing at the counter and wiping it down. It must be closing time, she thinks with a frown.

She was hoping to be able to shop, but luck's not on her side. She lingers in the doorway for a few moments, trying to decide if she should just leave and ask someone else or not.

She knows how annoying it is to still have customers enter when you're trying to close shop from experience. She doesn't plan on sticking around very long after she asks, but she still doesn't want to be a bother or anything.

The woman makes the decision for her, however, when she looks up from the dishrag she was cleaning with and spots Mikaela standing around in her door, twiddling her thumbs. She looks a little surprised, but she waves her over with a friendly smile.

"You should have said something if you were there, sweetie," the woman laughs as she tucks the rag in her apron and wipes her hands on it before leaning against the counter. "Did you need something?"

Mikaela hesitates for a moment but makes her way inside, stepping around a rack of items to stand in front of the counter. "Sorry," she says, "I don't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to ask a few quick questions."

"Nah, you're not interrupting at all," the woman assures with another smile. "I'm about done cleaning up anyway. What did you need to know? You're not from around here. Are you a tourist? Looking for a hotel?"

"Yeah. I'm not from around here, so I'm looking for a place to stay. My funds are limited, so I need a place that costs a reasonable amount."

"Mm, the Mira Inn's got good prices. 5,000 beli a day for a single-bed room. There's breakfast and dinner too. If you don't quite have enough with you, you could talk out a deal with her. Old Mira's pretty fair. Her place is on the left side of town, past the execution stand."

Mikaela frowns slightly at the price but nods. She'd probably be able to stay four nights there at most without running too low for her supplies.

"Thank you. That's not the only thing I wanted to ask though, if that's alright."

The woman laughs again. "Course it is, sweetie. You don't have ask to ask a question or anything. Go ahead."

"I might be staying for a while here," Mikaela starts, trying to figure out how to go about asking about Smoker. Specifically asking about him might raise questions, so it'd be easier to start with a general question and proceed from there. "So I was just wondering what the Marines here were like."

"The Marines?" The woman looks slightly bemused but answers regardless. "Well, they do their duty. They're all good men. They protect us and our town from all the awful pirates that stop by here, the good Captain especially."

Mikaela hums thoughtfully, shrugging slightly. "That's good," she says, picking her next words carefully. She doesn't know if Luffy has dealt with Morgan yet or not. "There was a corrupt Captain running the Marine base in Shells Town, so I was a little worried. "

A scowl slides onto the woman's face as she clicks her tongue. "Ah, you're talking about that Axe-Hand guy that was arrested by his own men, right? What a _despicable_ man. No, no, though. Our Captain Smoker is nothing like him. He's a bit gruff and scary-looking, sure, but he cares for us."

Mikaela holds back a grin. There's the confirmation that she's looking for. Smoker's still here in Loguetown for the time being and Luffy's already started his journey. Perfect, now she just has to find out when in the timeline she is so she knows how much time she has to prepare herself.

"I see," she says in response. "That's all I wanted to ask. Thank you for your time, miss."

It'd probably be easiest to look at the list of bounties and see if Luffy's gotten his bounty yet, since the appearance of it would mean that Luffy's about to enter the Grand Line. If he doesn't have one yet, she can still figure out how long she'll be waiting for him by checking the bounties of the people he'll be fighting in the East Blue and seeing who still has theirs open.

The thought of having to stop by the Marine base anyway makes her fight back a grimace, but she really has to find out where Luffy is so she doesn't end up accidentally missing his visit to Loguetown. She'd actually break down and cry if she did.

"Of course, sweetie," the woman nods back with a warm smile. "Any time."

Mikaela returns the smile, beginning to leave and taking approximately four steps before she turns around with a sheepish laugh.

"Sorry, I... forgot I still had one more thing to ask you. Is your store still open right now?"


End file.
